Chapter 123 three stern

Preparatory students have to go to school for at least two years, often four years, and junior students for four years.It is rare to be able to make a formal vow before the age of twenty-three or twenty-four.The Bernardine-Benedictine nuns of the line of Martin Verga never admitted widows to their orders. In their cells they endured a variety of tortures that no outsider could ever know about and they themselves should never speak of. When the junior student came to make a vow, everyone dressed her up as neatly as possible, put white roses on her, moisturized and curled her hair, then she fell on the ground, everyone covered her with a large black cloth, and sang mourning poems, hold the sacrifice of death.At the same time, all the nuns were divided into two lines. One line walked around her and said in a sad voice, "Our sister is dead", and the other line replied in a loud voice, "She lives in the heart of Jesus Christ." .

At the time when the story described in this book took place, there was a boarding school attached to the monastery.It is a boarding school for ladies, mostly rich men, including Mademoiselle de Saint-Aurair and Mademoiselle de Bellisan, and an English girl named de Talbot. , is also a well-known family in the Catholic Church.These young girls, educated by the nuns within those four walls, grew up with hatred against the world and the century.One of them said to us one day: "I get dizzy when I see stones in the street." They all wore blue dresses, white hats, and a silver gilt or Bronze Holy Spirit.On some major festivals, especially on St. Martha's Day, they can wear nuns' costumes all day long and do daily lessons according to the ritual prescribed by St. Benoit. This is a kind of grace for them. and supreme happiness.At first, the nuns often lent them their black clothes.Later, the dean forbade to borrow it, thinking that it was a sacrilege.Only beginners can borrow.That kind of impersonation was a convent in the monastery, with the secret intention of giving the children a foretaste of the cloak, and of attracting them to the path of monasticism, and it is remarkable that the boarders should take it as a sign of true happiness and happiness. real joy.They are just having fun. "This is a new trick, and it can change them." We ordinary people can't understand from those naive thoughts why they are so happy to hold a branch sprinkled with holy water, four of them standing in a row. In front of the music stand, they sang for hours without a break.

Those female disciples, apart from penance, also abide by all the canons in the monastery.There was a young woman who had been married for several years after she left the secular world, but she still couldn't change her habit. Whenever someone knocked on her door, she would always hasten to answer: "Forever!" Meet their relatives in the reception room.Not even their mothers could hug them.Let's see how strict this is.One day, a young girl received a visit from her mother, who was accompanied by a three-year-old little sister.The young girl, longing to hug her little sister, burst into tears.impossible.She begged that at least her little sister would put her little hand through the crack in the bars to kiss her, which was also refused, and the incident almost caused a storm.